Editing About Us

Yes. **MediaWiki is a CMS, but it is a very specialized one.** It is best known as the software behind Wikipedia.

### Why do people use MediaWiki?

MediaWiki is designed primarily for **knowledge bases, documentation, encyclopedias, and collaborative websites**, rather than normal business websites.

Its biggest strengths are:

* **Collaborative editing** — many users can create and edit articles.
* **Revision history** — every change is recorded, so you can see who changed what and revert changes.
* **User permissions** — administrators can control who can edit, create pages, upload files, etc.
* **Huge-scale content** — it can handle tens of thousands or millions of pages.
* **Categories and internal linking** — excellent for organizing large amounts of related information.
* **Templates** — reusable structures can be created for pages.
* **Extensions** — there are many extensions for adding functionality.
* **Discussion/history features** — useful for communities and documentation projects.
* **Open source and free** — no CMS licensing cost.

For example, if you're building:

> "A knowledge base containing 50,000 articles about historical documents, with multiple researchers editing and reviewing them"

MediaWiki makes a lot of sense.

![Image](https://images.openai.com/static-rsc-4/JkcCzGxLZT8hoUXMj7Cmih0V8C1GFUIO04LBVZ6wO6q4sFw_n8wPaxkh1F03ZcNErHUnSYWO15cMPixUW8c4B8QKg9FYXulyDMwP1lRq7zFdkKB9VKlFSvCB4WOluIGc0Jb1DOSD1-cjhTtKyz5ly8ZTWaZDucepQH4P7JGztSL1mb5JgqRHOdnUFM0c6iZA?purpose=fullsize)

![Image](https://images.openai.com/static-rsc-4/VjtIcc79FYRCH7825rHtZc_4VmGIGyHFOA1qaXGjojZ2wP550OeaSo3kPTA7YtF22ukN0y_wmGyS1cjZ161tvL34_8BiZ_8BUMDbmoO1V2znn9ZAd2ZBIgs_8nlQQxMZMjYeGBLA8p49At9GJsvqFSLMSA9VFhwHcHUZsReViX84CCi4Q3J52VuE9Nj3pK_s?purpose=fullsize)

![Image](https://images.openai.com/static-rsc-4/LoR5ldWMD7BeoRjPQFTR4ENrYQ_nPmpgE6HBD4DB5CihIb_iatyF24Ar7yvRIY1Dtt3rbtxfkic2cj42YAf4FF3f_8JxSS-60gLeBX9TYm5jNkH4wqiQon4Zp_URt93CoQzfl-a3M9tezzeCQpHSqM3B7NTIdHzt3dGVxRhExxiEW-WA-JDS-SvxIvq87fwb?purpose=fullsize)

![Image](https://images.openai.com/static-rsc-4/CNhEV2aXy5zscFa-PjpDVReTRhjtVntEFW3Hs5yeK63Mjta3O5-W_yiPgxTT5F-CBE3OpODYl5VNeGlGWss15KYEMirCOjcHT7S_hCO4dFin2liwxQ7WZczVkESs89CdieShPvGN_Rbk7vLmu6fidFkq9XuueWRIZj9g8k2ZUxIeeQ35lprZB3n6Hy2We9ts?purpose=fullsize)

![Image](https://images.openai.com/static-rsc-4/p7FFOt2E1rVX6WriYRsFAZlvESKFPSCqFTL7URcRlEwkEbb1b0deVEN0mCvc4EtQOm0crNUGLUQIJwclsgY4huoLo8ergV2eGalhvVSKJIABX86NhRwK2c9SbOJX_Txwi0Zw7PvhXAtWtDrd4a8tHl-lXLWXxR0I1uv-1ZSx5DJ0AuewPT2o6CxmgxR-teSB?purpose=fullsize)

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### But MediaWiki is NOT necessarily the best choice for a normal website

If someone wants:

> Company website → Home / About / Services / Blog / Contact

I would generally **not recommend MediaWiki**.

WordPress, for example, is much more suitable because it gives you a better visual editing experience, themes, page builders, plugins, SEO tools, forms, ecommerce, etc.

### What are the alternatives?

It depends heavily on **what you're building**:

| CMS           | Best for                                | Difficulty  |
| ------------- | --------------------------------------- | ----------- |
| **MediaWiki** | Wikipedia-style knowledge bases         | Medium–High |
| **WordPress** | Business websites, blogs, content sites | Easy–Medium |
| **Drupal**    | Large/complex content platforms         | High        |
| **Joomla**    | General CMS + portals                   | Medium      |
| **DokuWiki**  | Simple documentation/wiki               | Easy–Medium |
| **BookStack** | Internal documentation/knowledge bases  | Easy        |
| **Wiki.js**   | Modern knowledge bases/wiki             | Medium      |
| **Outline**   | Modern team documentation               | Easy        |
| **Ghost**     | Publishing/blogging                     | Easy        |
| **Webflow**   | Visual marketing websites               | Easy–Medium |

### MediaWiki vs modern alternatives

If your goal is specifically a **wiki/knowledge base**, I'd look at these:

**1. Wiki.js — probably the most interesting modern alternative**

It's much more modern-looking than traditional MediaWiki and supports Markdown, visual editing, authentication, search, permissions, etc.

**2. BookStack — excellent for internal documentation**

Very straightforward. Its structure is essentially:

> Shelves → Books → Chapters → Pages

This works extremely well for company manuals, technical documentation, SOPs, etc.

**3. DokuWiki — lightweight and simple**

Good if you want a relatively small documentation/wiki system without the complexity of MediaWiki.

**4. Outline — excellent modern UX**

Particularly good for teams that want something resembling Notion/Confluence rather than Wikipedia.

### The important distinction

Think of it this way:

**MediaWiki**
→ "We have a massive amount of interconnected knowledge and many people need to maintain it."

**WordPress**
→ "We need a website where administrators can easily publish and manage content."

**BookStack / Wiki.js / Outline**
→ "We need a modern documentation/knowledge-base platform."

So if you're asking because **a client currently has a MediaWiki website and wants to redesign/migrate it**, tell me what type of website it is and roughly how many pages/articles it has. I can tell you whether **MediaWiki should be kept or migrated to WordPress, Wiki.js, BookStack, etc.**, and what the migration difficulty would be.



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